Dear Immanuel: It gets pretty disgusting over 110 and you just do what you can to stay out of the sun. In fact, I haven't even ventured outside today and it's 4PM. The nights are pretty magical, however.

There's a remote area about 30 miles East of Indio called Eagle Mountain. Kaiser Steel used to own an iron mine up there; it shut down when Kaiser closed its Fontana steel mill. I've always wanted to explore that area, probably in a four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying a large supply of drinking water. Some January, maybe--definitely not in July.

Whenever I'm out there I feel like I'm on the Mars colony, post-terraforming or something. You can look up from wherever you are and there's all those rocky mountains and such. Kinda cool! But sure gets hot out there.